Britain, still to some extent a free country, is one up on the U.S. in allowing anyone – even a public figure – to sue for libel, especially where, as here, he is libeled in his profession. That typically triples the damages.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, here are Nuccitelli’s allegations, in bold and in order of appearance, followed in each instance by the truth.

Lindzen “is one of the approximately 3% of climate scientists who believe the human influence on climate is relatively small”.

Yet the data file attached to a paper Nuccitelli co-authored last year marked only 64 papers out of 11,944 – or just 0.5% – as stating they believed the human influence on climate is not “relatively small”, in that they agree with the IPCC that more than half of the global warming since 1950 was manmade. Nuccitelli knew there was no consensus.

Lindzen’s iris hypothesis that changes in water vapor would dampen global warming “have been refuted”, in that measurements show water vapor increasing in the atmosphere and amplifying global warming.

Figure 1. Column water vapor, showing a decline from 1984-2012 at the crucial mid-troposphere pressure altitude.

Water vapor is not a well-mixed greenhouse gas and cannot be reliably measured. There are some measurements that purport to show column water vapor increasing in the atmosphere, and others, equally reputable (Fig. 1), that purport to show it decreasing.

In any event, Professor Lindzen’s iris hypothesis is concerned less with column water vapor and more with the occurrence and influence of a specific cloud type at altitude.

Lindzen was wrong to say climate change in the past 100 years has been minimal, in that “the current rate of warming is unprecedented over the past 11,000 years”.

The world warmed by 0.72 Cº in the past 100 years (HadCRUt4, December 1913 to November 2013). This rate of warming is far from “unprecedented over the past 11,000 years”. In Central England, warming at a rate equivalent to 4.33 Cº/century (Fig. 2) was measured over the four decades 1694-1733. That rate, six times the rate observed in the past 100 years, occurred before the Industrial Revolution even began.

Figure 2. Central England temperature anomalies and trend, January 1694 to December 1733.

The Central England record is a reasonable proxy for global temperature change because the region is at an appropriate latitude. To verify this, I compared the Central England regional temperature record and the mean of the HadCRUt4, GISS, and NCDC global temperature datasets over the 120 years December 1893 to November 2013. The 120-year period was chosen because it is a multiple of 60 years, canceling out any distorting effects of the 60-year cycles of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Results (Fig. 3) show that the Central England record, which began in 1659, is indeed a respectable proxy for global temperature change in the period before the global instrumental record began in 1850.

Figure 3. The global temperature anomaly record (above) shows warming at a rate equivalent to 0.74 Cº/century. The Central England record (below) shows much the same: 0.78 Cº/century equivalent.

The warming of the 20th century was not “unprecedented”. On the evidence of the warming of 1694 to 1733 in central England, it was well within natural variability.

The “15-year pause myth” is “completely debunked … surface warming over the past decade turns out to be more than double previous estimates”.

Once again, it is necessary to look at the actual data. The mean of all five principal global temperature datasets shows no global warming for almost 13 years; the RSS satellite dataset shows no global warming for 17 years 4 months; and the Central England dataset shows no warming for 25 full years (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. Zero global warming for 13, 17, and 25 years respectively.

Given the unanimity of the global temperature records demonstrating The Pause, it cannot be credibly stated that it has been “completely debunked”: and still less was it appropriate for Mr. Nuccitelli viciously to attack Professor Lindzen on this ground.

The climate “continues to accumulate heat at a rate equivalent to 4 Hiroshima bomb detonations per second”.

That statement is tendentiously political, not scientific, and it has no scientific basis. Since the outer boundary of the Earth-atmosphere system is outer space, the appropriate measure to determine whether radiant energy is in net terms accumulating in the atmosphere is the time-integral of total solar irradiance. On that basis, even if one were to believe the IPCC’s now-discredited estimates of climate sensitivity, it is possible – indeed, quite likely – that a net loss of energy from the Earth-atmosphere system is now underway. If so, global temperature may even fall, in which event the “4 Hiroshimas per second” meme is still more clearly demonstrable nonsense.

Figure 5. The IPCC abandons the models’ more extreme projections.

“The accuracy of climate models” has been “much better than Lindzen claims”.

Even the IPCC no longer buys that one. For the first time in its undistinguished history, it has explicitly accepted that the models are unreliable and has substituted its “expert judgment” for the models’ output. It is worth repeating the two graphs (Fig. 5) showing the IPCC’s startling but universally-unreported climbdown.

The first graph shows, in pink, the IPCC’s 0.4-1.0 Cº projection for the next 30 years, visibly in line with the models, from the pre-final draft of the 2013 Fifth Assessment Report. The second graph shows, in green, the drastically-revised projection of 0.3-0.7 Cº, with a best estimate below the mid-range and hence in the region of 0.4 Cº. Thus, the former mid-range estimate becomes the high-end estimate, and the former low-end estimate becomes the best estimate – a drop of almost half compared with the previous mid-range estimate.

Even this new, drastically-reduced estimate may well be excessive. The monthly Global Warming Prediction Index (Fig. 6), now adjusted to show the lower IPCC projections, still shows the prediction running hot compared with observed reality.

Figure 6. The Global Warming Prediction Index, showing the IPCC’s predicted temperature change in the nine years 2005-2013 overshooting observation by an eighth of a Celsius degree, equivalent to 1.5 Cº/century.

Lindzen was wrong to say that the likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability seemed small.

Since natural variability has yielded warming at 4.33 Cº/century within the past 350 years, Professor Lindzen is very likely to prove correct in saying that warming by 2100 will be unlikely to exceed natural variability. Here Nuccitelli is blaming Professor Lindzen for exercising his professional judgment, which is very likely to prove a great deal closer to the mark than the amateur prejudice of Nuccitelli.

There is “much more [warming] to come over the next century”.

Nuccitelli is entitled to his no-doubt profitable opinion, but on the evidence there could be as little as 1 Cº global warming between now and 2100.

Hansen’s prediction of future warming made in 1988 has proven closer to reality than a prediction based on statements by Lindzen in 1989

Mr. Nuccitelli’s chief evidence for this claim is Fig. 7, which purports to show the global temperature record compared with James Hansen’s 1988 temperature projection and with an imagined projection by Professor Lindzen.

However, Nuccitelli’s graph is gravely defective at the four points labeled A to D in Fig. 6:

Figure 6. The four defects A-D in Nuccitelli’s graph.

The four defects in Nuccitelli’s graph are as follows. A jury would take a dim view:

A: Before the U.S. Senate on 23 June 1988, Hansen said that his Scenario A, which predicted 0.5 Cº/decade warming to 2060, was the “business-as-usual” case; yet Nuccitelli has only shown Hansen’s less exaggerated Scenario B.

B. Nuccitelli talks of Professor Lindzen having made a prediction in 1989: yet his fictitious graph of Lindzen’s imaginary “prediction” is fully half a Celsius degree below the observed temperature in 1989.

C: Nuccitelli carefully omits to show the last few years of no global warming, concealing the fact that the observed outturn is now well below even Hansen’s Scenario B.

D: Nuccitelli assumes negligible natural variability, when it is not less than 1 Cº/century.

The major difference between Lindzen and Galileo was that Galileo was right.

Actually, Galileo was wrong. The Church, as well as informed scientific opinion, had long agreed that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about. However, Galileo had drawn inappropriate theological conclusions from heliocentricity, perpetrating the notorious non sequitur that since the Earth was not the centre of the Universe the Incarnation and Crucifixion were of less importance than the Church maintained. It was Galileo’s theological conclusion the Church objected to, not the scientific conclusion that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. Galileo had persisted in a curmudgeonly refusal to recant his non sequitur. Seven of the ten cardinals who tried him offered him a compromise: if he would recant his assertion that the Earth went round the Sun his theological conclusion would fall away and there would be no need for him to recant it. He agreed to this: but three of the Cardinals, to their credit, refused to sign this nonsensical agreement, to which neither the majority of the Bench nor the accused ought ever to have assented.

Professor Lindzen is “an outlier whose arguments have been disproved time and time again, including about the link between smoking and lung cancer”.

Not one of Professor Lindzen’s arguments has been “disproved”, though several have not been fashionable and have been opposed, on various generally shaky grounds, in the literature. It is a serious libel to suggest that his arguments have been “disproved” when they have merely been disagreed with in some quarters.

And, as far as I know, Professor Lindzen does not dispute the well-established link between smoking and lung cancer, though he would be within his rights to dispute the imagined link between passive smoking and lung cancer. There is a 1:10 million risk that a non-smoker will contract lung cancer, and a 1:8 million risk that a passive smoker will contract lung cancer. The difference between the two risk rates is statistically insignificant.

The EPA’s decision to regulate passive smoke as though it were a class A carcinogen was vacated by a U.S. Federal District Judge in North Carolina in 1998. The judge said: “The court is faced with the ugly possibility that EPA adopted a methodology for each chapter, without explanation, based on the outcome sought in that chapter.” The court also noted an EPA internal document admitting that the evidence was insufficient to classify passively-inhaled smoke as a class A carcinogen, and that the EPA had not followed its own classification guidelines. The court found evidence that the EPA had cherry-picked its data, and used the term “cherry-picked” in its judgment. The court held that EPA’s exclusion of nearly half the available studies violated its own guidelines, which required it to review all the available evidence. EPA was also held to have fallen foul of the law by explicitly refusing to research all aspects of indoor air quality.

Interestingly, the court also found that EPA, in switching from the usual 95% to a 90% statistical confidence interval, “to increase the likelihood that its meta-analysis would appear statistically significant”. That is exactly what the IPCC did in 2007. Even then, the EPA found a relative risk of only 1.19, which is only “weakly associative”; and, if it had included the studies it had excluded, it would not have been able to demonstrate a relative risk greater than unity at all. EPA had adopted an a priori position and had then adjusted the statistical methodology and sampling in an attempt to confirm that position.

The court concluded that, “Using its own methodology and its selected studies, EPA did not demonstrate a statistically significant association between ETS and lung cancer. … EPA changed its methodology to find a statistically significant association.”

If, therefore, Professor Lindzen challenges the EPA’s self-justifying association between passive smoking and lung cancer, he is in excellent company.

Gentlemen of the jury, those are the facts. You have heard Mr. Nuccitelli’s arguments, and you have heard the response of science to them. Briefly, let us consider the law.

At many points, Nuccitelli has flagrantly misrepresented the scientific position with intent to harm Professor Lindzen’s reputation, and at some point it can be shown that he knew the truth but chose to suppress or misstate it. At many other points, he has presented the science as though it were settled when in fact Professor Lindzen’s position remains undisproved, even though some may disagree with it. And Nuccitelli’s attempt to smear him by falsely accusing him of repudiating the link between lung cancer and smoking was calculated still further to damage his reputation, at the point of his retirement, by suggesting – incorrectly – an entire disregard of the scientific method on his part.

Gentlemen of the jury, you are also entitled to take into consideration the unpleasant, malicious, spiteful tone of Mr. Nuccitelli’s article, its wide circulation on the website of a substantial national newspaper, and Mr. Nuccitelli’s failure to consult Professor Lindzen to verify the facts before what you may well regard as a malevolent and wholly unjustifiable attempt at professional and character assassination for purely partisan political reasons, and without a shred of scientific justification at any point.

What is your verdict? From my own knowledge of the Professor and his distinguished work, I find Nuccitelli’s piece misleading, offensive, and cruel. Damages will be huge.

Sorry to quibble, Mr Monckton, but this part is incorrect: “The Church, as well as informed scientific opinion, had long agreed that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about.” First, no one used the word ‘orbit’ at the time. Kepler invented that word (as we understand it), and few in Rome were reading Kepler at the time. More important, however, is that Rome at the time remained firmly geocentric in its cosmological outlook: the official line in Rome was that the Sun revolved around the earth. This is an indisputable fact. As for the rest of “informed scientific opinion,” … It was all over the map. Mathematically, Kepler’s work was cutting edge, but few people understood it, and Kepler wasn’t particularly good at spreading the word about his ideas. Bear in mind that in France at this time people were being executed or permanently banished just for disagreeing with Aristotle (let alone being actual theological heretics). No, the bulk of “informed scientific opinion” did not come around to heliocentric cosmology until well after Newton’s synthesis. It is true, however, that Galileo’s ‘real’ crime was not so much heliocentrism, but rather that he, a mere mathematician, had dared to step into the playground of the theologians. As for the rest of it, entertaining as usual (although I do happen to believe that our libel laws on this side of the Atlantic are far more civilized).

An excellent rebuttal. Unfortunately none of the true believers will bother to read it though, instead they’ll just read the rebuttal offered by Nuccitelli and his apologists that misstate what was laid out here. These people are hopeless; unwilling to open their minds to a new thought or idea and quite content to believe they know it all without once ever really listening to the other side.

It’s rather astonishing that the folks who rely so heavily on the made-up “97% consensus” should then turn around and lean so heavily on one study –Cowtan and Way– to attack “the pause”. It’s one study. One study “completely debunks”? That’s zealotry talk, not science.

Personally, I think it is highly dubious that two data sets, both of which show “the pause”, should somehow not show it once “spliced” together. It seems much, much more likely to me that the splicing procedure was flawed in some way, which is always a danger when two data sets collected and processed by very different means are attempted to be stitched together.

who the heck is Dana “Nut”ticelli er… Nuccitelli? and who cares? Prof Lindzen is a pioneer in atmospheric sciences who has made signifcant contributions to the advancement of this discipline. This Nut character is an unworthy blowhard. Why you would want to dignify his insanity and give him a front page posting here is beyond me!

Lawsuits of this type are exactly what we need. Just like the Dover case on Intelligent Design was a watershed moment for the ID crowd (Google it if you don’t know of it, the conservative judges 30 page opinion essentially laughing the IDers out of court is worth the reading). You see, a court is governed formally be reason on logic. A court will take whatever time necessary to hear all the relevant testimony, and the judge and jury will spend months if need be pouring over the evidence. If Monckton’s case is as ironclad as it seems, it would be a very worthwhile exercise. I also think Lindzen’s standing and demeanor make him an ideal plaintiff for such an action.

I’m way off topic here, but I have to point out that Galileo never said or even implied anything about the crucifixion or incarnation being of less importance. However, there is not insignificant evidence that some of the Cardinals thought that Galileo’s ideas published in “Il Saggiatore” (1623) would directly contradict the Church’s very recently adopted doctrine of transubstantiation (it had only formally become doctrine at the Council of Trent 50 years or so prior to Galileo’s work). On this account, their fears were entirely correct. Galileo was an atomist, and atomism completely undermined Aristotelian matter theory, on which transubstantiation is based. Now, excuse me while I step down from my little soap box.

” Actually, Galileo was wrong. The Church, as well as informed scientific opinion, had long agreed that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about. ”
—-l
All the other points seem valid, but this is news to me. I assume this statement to refer to the trial of 1633. Is there perhaps an authoritive citation for this?

I keep seeing the trick of Figure 7. Friends who believe in AGW send me plots they have found somewhere which, curiously (or not, really), all stop at the year 2000.

I advise everyone to be on the lookout. The first thing you should do when confronted with a graph is confirm that it does not stop in 2000. If it does, you win an easy victory, and get to drive the point home that the alarmists are not to be trusted.

who the heck is Dana “Nut”ticelli er… Nuccitelli? and who cares? Prof Lindzen is a pioneer in atmospheric sciences who has made signifcant contributions to the advancement of this discipline. This Nut character is an unworthy blowhard. Why you would want to dignify his insanity and give him a front page posting here is beyond me!”

The problem is not the nutcase, the problem is The Guardian, . That the Guardian uses this nutter to propagate such dangerous and misleading propaganda and libel against real science is a serious matter of public interest that must be addressed. I expect, if Lindzen had a mind to it, he could extract a grovelling apology from the Guardian for what seems to be a straight forward example of intentional malicious character assassination.

I too believe that it’s an open and such case of defamation. Whether or not the damages would be huge, they would certainly not be de minimis. I doubt that it would get that far, in any event. The newspaper would probably settle and issue an apology well before the court proceedings.

I find it strange that Nutcase makes a claim of positive water vapor feedbacks at a time of accelerating CO2 emissions, and yet the Earth refuses to warm.
Doesn’t this mean this provide evidence that the atmosphere is even less responsive to CO2 forcing since even with additional water vapor forcing it still can’t manage to overcome natural variations.

Sooner or later we are going to have to take someone to court, particularly to stop this “denier” lie from the likes of the BBC. What are we supposed to be denying? It is not that the world warmed since the little ice-age, it is not that CO2 has a greenhouse effect and it is certainly not that climate changes.

So to what does this “denier” label refer? We don’t deny science, we don’t deny the temperature data showing it has not warmed for 15+ years.

This is the biggest libel, because the real truth of this “denier” label was overtly expressed on the BBC radio 4 program when they linked it to holocaust denial.

In other words this “denier” label is pure slander used maliciously to damage the reputations and job prospects of anyone who would dare to be sceptical of the propaganda on global warming.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely to be those scurrilous broadcasters and journalists who encourage this “denier” lie, as usually they are careful to avoid slandering an individual like Lord Monckton, me or Lindzen.

No, it will be some poor daft environmentalist, wet behind the ears, egged on by the vitriol from those running this propaganda campaign, and it will be this daft individual who really knows no better who will end up in court unless Lindzen does sue Nuccitelli.

So, please, please lets get a case like this to court, where the real culprits are in the dock.

IMHO, very little of this is libelous. Incorrect, likely, but even under the UK’s generous (to the defendant) rules at most it is an “I’m right,” ” nuh uh, I am!” argument, i.e., arguing interpretations.

Lawsuits of this type are exactly what we need. Just like the Dover case on Intelligent Design was a watershed moment for the ID crowd (Google it if you don’t know of it, the conservative judges 30 page opinion essentially laughing the IDers out of court is worth the reading). You see, a court is governed formally be reason on logic. A court will take whatever time necessary to hear all the relevant testimony, and the judge and jury will spend months if need be pouring over the evidence. If Monckton’s case is as ironclad as it seems, it would be a very worthwhile exercise. I also think Lindzen’s standing and demeanor make him an ideal plaintiff for such an action.

Sorry, Glenn, but judges rule on the law, not the validity of scientific hypotheses. IDers have been on a roll of late, what with the discovery of a nested code inside the DNA code, the publication of Darwin’s Doubt about the Cambrian Explosion, and the hot field of biomimetics. Not to mention that even non-ID biologists now admit that the emergence of functional folding proteins by chance processes is “almost a miracle.”

Let me ask you this: If a judge ruled that, in his opinion, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming was real, would that settle the debate in your mind?

With all due respect, I reckon it is a mistake to try exonerating the Church in Galileo’s case. Lord Monckton’s sophistry, designed to weave a Christian apology into his critique of another, pagan green religion, reads needless and inordinate.

It is the persecution of a single, practically defenseless scientist by the all-powerful Catholic Church that was a non sequitur, because any religious faith, however interpreted, is absurd by definition (as declared by St. Thomas Aquinas), while Galileo’s mind, struggling to see reality as it is, already felt uncomfortable with the prevailing dogma.

Five centuries have passed since that shameful trial, and still there are some among us who believe that all our pants would drop without suspenders from Heaven. Please be assured, Lord Monckton, that there are individuals capable of remaining moral while facing the Unknown. It may not be possible to conquer Death yet, but at least we can out-stare it with dignity.

Looks to me that there are enough weasel words for Nuccitelli to deflect blame. The jurors might find the science hard and observe that green “charities” don’t like Lindzen.
It would be interesting to read an actual libel lawer’s opinion.

That graph is absolutely abysmal. What did he do just do his own wiggles and claim that’s what lindzen believes? Jesus that is despicable.

I can’t see Lindzen actually taking Dana to court, but it would be nice to see a high profile case forcing the MSM to report the skeptic view point for once.

DrC, and Christopher Monckton, I am intrigued by the disagreement between you on Galileo. I am sure no one is making things up, but it would be great for you both to clarify and indicate where and why you have come to the conclusions you have.

Lord Monckton’s article is a tour de force example of a complete* de-bunk of Nuccitelli and Abraham’s piece in The Guardian (6 Jan 2014). That it is libellous is, for me, well proven.

At least one preceding comment questions the economic sense of persuing a libel case which can be cost-prohibitive for individuals. I suggest that a formal complaint to the (UK) Independent Press Complaints Commission (regrettably also abbreviated to IPCC), using Lord Monckton’s article as evidence*, would be a far less expensive exercise and, if upheld, arguably more effective in getting The Guardian to be more circumspect before regurgitating Nuccitelli’s venomous opinions in future. A privately funded libel case on the back of such a judgement by the IPCC should then be considered.

Perhaps Christopher Monckton and Richard Lindzen would give us their thoughts on such an approach.

*Since the reference to Galileo has raised questions here, perhaps this should be omitted from arguments supporting the complaint. Even if Lord Monckton’s assertions are correct, the time and effort needed to support them are not justified, since the overwhelming science-based rebuttals do the job well enough. IMHO!

The UK Defamation Act 2013 came into effect on 1 January. The effect is that you have to prove real substantial damages to reputation. And there is a defence of justified opinion.

Its an amusing piece, the arguments are basically correct, except maybe for the excursus into Church history, but the chances of success in a real suit are just about zero.

And yes, Nuccitelli is a nasty spiteful propagandist. As for the Guardian, it was once an excellent paper, but increasingly as its readership has fallen it has drifted into some very weird company, of which Skeptical Science is only one example.

An organization labeled “Unskeptical Science” says it all?
Since no science can be based on being unskeptical this really means that it’s not based on science.
Further more being skeptical of Lindzen claims is really not an unskeptical act is it?

So the proclaimed unskeptical science organization are really only unskeptical about some things?
Let me guess the political decided UNFCCC and Agenda 21?

So the real name should have been:
The Unskeptical UNFCCC policy based “science” only.org
?

Lew Skannen says:
January 13, 2014 at 8:48 pm
“Sueing is an expensive, difficult and risky process. Better to get a peice in the Graun refuting the garbage so all the Nuttycherry sycophants can have their noses rubbed in it.”

Guardian is an MI5/MI6 PsyOp outlet, part of the NYT/Guardian/Spiegel axis (see Snowden releases). So good luck with that.

In Central England, warming at a rate equivalent to 4.33 Cº/century (Fig. 2) was measured over the four decades 1694-1733. That rate, six times the rate observed in the past 100 years, occurred before the Industrial Revolution even began.

The Central England record is a reasonable proxy for global temperature change because the region is at an appropriate latitude. To verify this, I compared the Central England regional temperature record and the mean of the HadCRUt4, GISS, and NCDC global temperature datasets over the 120 years December 1893 to November 2013

Fail. It may be a good proxy during the modern instrumental record but extrapolating backwards three hundred years is ridiculous. The mercury in glass thermometer was not even invented until around 1710. Readings were taken in unheated rooms, rather than outdoors (we’re hot on station siting around here right?) and some of the data series is not even from England at all but Utrecht in the Netherlands.

I love it when I see this comment. I just direct people to a page I setup with a “4 Hiroshima” counter plus a “Reality” counter next to it. Opens everyone’s eyes to the misleading BS that Dana peddles.

“Can we make it a class action lawsuit since nuticelli has essentially slandered everyone who opposes his views? I am going to need help paying my increased energy bills.”

Yes he has been very skeptical to a great deal of people. Mostly towards critique put forward from climate scientists. Strange that they call them self an uncritical science org?
I mean there is probably no one more critical to an ordinary scientific debate about climate than the unskeptical science org?

“An organization labeled “Unskeptical Science” says it all?
Since no science can be based on being unskeptical this really means that it’s not based on science.”
Except being unskeptical about being skeptical?

I apologise in advance if this appears a little messy but I hope the message still seems clear.

I was taken by a comment posted by Nuccitelli on the current article where he stated ..

.

“DanaNuccitelli MCourtney

07 January 2014 12:35am
Recommend
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MCourtney – paper is here (free to download) and post about it is here. juana –

“You have made a hobby out of denigrating people who disagree with you with rude terms like “denier.””

“Denier” is simply a descriptive term for someone who denies something, but it’s also a term I rarely use, and have never used at The Guardian.

Lindzen is in the 3 percent. Sorry if you disagree based on misunderstanding our methods, but that’s the factual reality of the situation.

.

I was taken by his assertion that he NEVER used the term “denier” as it didn’t seem to gel with my memory of his writings. I then looked back through his archive ( http://www.theguardian.com/discussion/user/id/4434349 ) to see if he was being completely honest and found….

.

“DanaNuccitelli

19 December 2013 3:28pm
2

Newspapers should ban climate deniers from publishing editorials or letters to the editor. If they wouldn’t publish a piece by a flat earther, or somebody claiming smoking doesn’t have adverse health effects, then they shouldn’t publish climate denial misinformation either.

” …Even if Lord Monckton’s assertions are correct, the time and effort needed to support them are not justified, ….”
—-l
Not even a single citatation? The matter is clearly more complex than I originally thought :)

As a rule, CAGW supporters are filetted here when stating contentious views without adequate backup or reasoning. I feel that this sceptical method should apply to everyone, no matter how noble their cause or educational their post.

“Lindzen was wrong to say climate change in the past 100 years has been minimal, in that “the current rate of warming is unprecedented over the past 11,000 years”.
That ‘unprecedented warming in 11,000 years’ claim comes from a misinterpretation of the Marcott et al paper, that its authors disavow: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/31/marcott-issues-a-faq-on-thei-paper/
Apparently Nuccitelli never got the word that even the authors of that paper make no such claim!

Oh yes he did.
I commented on that article. I submitted comments refuting each of the ways that Lindzen was “wrong” with references to the IPCC AR5. Dana kept some of the comments (in part) and replied to them. Thus it appeared that my comments were unsubstantiated… but they weren’t!

He had censored the comments that linked to the IPCC AR5 so as it looked like my opinion vs his. Not the IPCC’s opinion vs his.

He knew he was misinforming his readers.
He read the comments and the links to the IPCC
But he deliberately lied.

Libel in the English courts is an expensive and risky business and should be avoided unless seeking publicity and you can afford to lose.
Seems to me the the Granadiad readers will believe Nuccitelli 100 times out of a 100 as his words fit their world view. True believers don’t want to be bothered by facts or debate. The new religion won’t be diminished by rationality. Follow the money and the politics.

Another gem…Lots of the D word he categorically denied ever using in the Guardian….

“DanaNuccitelli commented on Attacks on climate science by former NASA staff shouldn’t be taken seriously.
13 Apr 2012 8:40pm
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As far as I know there is nobody on either side of this argument that does not accept that CO2 has a warming effect

There are a lot of climate denialists who deny that CO2 has a warming effect. Many argue that the greenhouse effect violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, for example. Others argue that CO2 is heavier than air and thus can’t contribute to the greenhouse effect – most recently Joe Bastardi on Fox News. There’s a whole group of people writing about ‘Slaying the Sky Dragon’ who believe this ‘CO2 can’t cause warming’ nonsense. Quite a few ‘contrarians’ (i.e. Roy Spencer, Fred Singer, Anthony Watts) have been trying to distance themselves from these hardcore deniers recently.

As we’ve seen in this comment thread, there are a lot of different things that climate denialists deny. If you put any two climate denialists in a room together, odds are very good that their beliefs on the subject will contradict each other.

I’m afraid it doesn’t matter what the truth is.
Nut-job-celli has his “truth” down in print in “The Guardian”- which informs the BBC and the left-wing liberal “elite” that govern in the UK.
Ergo it will be believed and has served its purpose.

[For the record, William Connolley tucked tail and ran when I suggested a debate over global warming at Oxford between you and him. Not surprising, since he is the one person who I believe has even less integrity and ethics than Nuccitelli.]

Plese keep these articles coming. Exposing the banruptcy of the MMGW clique is important — and they make it so easy.

” ” …Even if Lord Monckton’s assertions are correct, the time and effort needed to support them are not justified, ….”,
—-l
” Not even a single citatation? The matter is clearly more complex than I originally thought :),

” As a rule, CAGW supporters are filetted here when stating contentious views without adequate backup or reasoning. I feel that this sceptical method should apply to everyone, no matter how noble their cause or educational their post.”

I am not at all sure that I understand the point you are making. Please clarify, and I’ll do my best to answer you.

If I were Professor Lindzen, I’d test the strength of the potential libel case by approaching a canny firm of lawyers (such as those who recently heavily defeated the Scottish “government” on my behalf) and asking them to decide whether they’d be willing to take the case on a contingency basis – no foal, no fee.

To those who say the piece is not libel, I reply that I have never lost any libel suit that I brought, for as a former professional journalist I am trained in libel law. The piece is plainly and gravely defamatory of Professor Lindzen in his profession; it was published on the website of a substantial national newspaper; it was calculated to damage him; and, contrary to one commenter’s impression that the Defamation Act 2013 would make the case harder to prove, it would actually make it easier to prove.

Since Professor Lindzen has nothing to lose by quietly briefing a firm of lawyers and asking whether they will take the case on a contingency basis, at no cost to him in any event, that is what I should recommend.

As to Galileo, the papers in the trial case are available. Those who disagree with my account may like to read them. One commenter asserts that the doctrine of transubstantiation had only recently been declared in Galileo’s time. On the contrary, it had been declared by Christ Himself, Who said, “This is my body”, without ifs or buts. Some years ago, reading the letters of Pliny to the Roman Emperor Trajan, I came across Pliny’s account of these strange creatures the Christians. Pliny wrote, “They make their God and then they eat Him”. This is one of the earliest independent testimonies to the fact that the early Church indeed believed in what later came to be called transubstantiation.

That said, I should not be inclined to found the case on the Galileo episode, which I mentioned in passing only for interest. The case should be founded on the wilful misrepresentations of the science perpetrated by Nutticelli. To those who say it is not the place of a judge to decide questions of science, I say that – for instance – a judge is perfectly capable of deciding that Nutticelli was inaccurate when he denied The Pause, or when he pretended that there was a 97% “consensus”. One commenter has provided useful evidence to establish that Nutticelli’s attention had been drawn to the falsity of the basis for his belief that The Pause had been “completely debunked” but had chosen to suppress it in the comment thread at Unskeptical Science.

The plaintiff in a libel case has the right to choose whether the case should be heard by a judge or by a jury. If anything, a jury would be even more shocked than a judge by Nutticelli’s simply making up a supposed “prediction” by Professor Lindzen. That, because the evidence is visual, and because it is quite clear that Lindzen never drew any curve such as the blue curve in Fig. 7, The curve is a fiction, and a serious one.

As Lord Birkenhead, then F.E. Smith, wrote in the Unilever libel case (and this was his entire written Opinion): “The libel is grave. Damages will be extensive.”

Are you saying your comments had sections removed and then were answered? If you are this is a very good story. I think Chris Booker would go with that. Something similar happened before on the Guardian Monbiot blog re Pauchauri. We could tie the two stories together.

Nutty is not the story, the story is the editorial policy of the Guardian.

I am saying that the comments were in a sequence referring back to each other as their is a limit to how large a comment can be.
The comments that linked to the IPCC AR5 were not displayed.
The comments that referred to those comments with the link were displayed and Nucitelli just said “you are wrong”.
He was lying and he knew it.

However, an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (augmented for the period 2006–2012 by RCP4.5 simulations, Section 9.3.2) reveals that 111 out of 114 realisations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble (Box 9.2 Figure 1a; CMIP5 ensemble-mean trend is 0.21 ºC per decade). This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error. These potential sources of the difference, which are not mutually exclusive, are assessed below, as is the cause of the observed GMST trend hiatus.

Dana replied “Sorry, this comment is total BS. Nothing more to say about it. Try reading the above article again (or perhaps for the first time).”

” …I am not at all sure that I understand the point you are making. Please clarify, and I’ll do my best to answer you. ”
—-l
My apologies. I did not express myself clearly.

I feel that the unusual statement : ” …Actually, Galileo was wrong. The Church, as well as informed scientific opinion, had long agreed that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about.” deserves a discussion. It seems to run counter to what I thought was accepted as historic fact, and as such I find it surprising that there is no citation (all the other points seem very well backed up).

My point was that we would not let such a statement pass from a CAGW supporter, and as such it would be best to clarify the matter. I see that trial papers have been mentioned. That is what I was looking for.

SO you really are saying it is legitimate to equate modern temperatures in Central England as measured in weather stations, with pre-mercury measurements in unheated rooms in an entirely different country? The curators of the data themselves warn that no daily series truly representative of CET can begin before about 1770

Fortunately for Mr Nuccitelli, in US Libel law, the person committing the libel must be a ‘credible’ source.

I.E. The mentally retarded ,mentally ill and others deemed to be incapable of distinguishing between fact, fiction and delusions can not be charged with libel.

IMHO As we are talking about people who seriously believe that people who disagree with climate alarmism must also deny the moon landing I think the case can be made that they are incapable of distinquishing between fact and fiction.

looks like others agree re the Nutter..
Visualizing How Big Dana’s Lies Are
by stevengoddard
Hansen’s 1988 BAU forecast for scenario A was a complete disaster. They weren’t even in the ballpark. Popular Science – Google Books This is what Dana shows in his 100% fraudulent graph.

My question/comment was on how easy suing for Libel in the UK was, but Lord Monckton answered that in one of the comments. I sincerely hope Lindzen sues Nuccitelli. Disagreement is one thing. name calling is even mild compared to attempting to destroy a person’s professional reputation due to your own petulance and ignorance. Nuccitelli is a bully. But a very weak one. He should be thumped for his lying, and malevolence.

“About midday the inconvenient evidence that I provided at the Guardian forum, along with discussions of that evidence with aghast Monbiot fans were removed from the thread. The thread was closed down.

Every single comment about the accounts was removed.”

Booker and North were thinking of using it, but other stuff crowded the topic out. What has happened to you has similarities. It is about manipulating bad news to pull teh wool over teh eyes of their readers.

I agree with Scottish Sceptic that it is important that someone finally sues an alarmist for this sort of libelous behaviour. It is the next wall to break down – to establish in court exactly what a ‘d–ier’ does and does not really think, and to expose the vitriol and lies of people like Dana.
Having said that, I would understand completely why Prof. Lindzen may not want to take such a step in this case.

Exactly the same has happened to me and I have never been abusive or threatening nor incited others.

I have also had whole swathes of comments actually removed in their entirety.

I have even had comments removed in toto in which I have simply linked to another article in the G itself!? (I have a screengrab of that one)…not O/T link either, just contradictory to the narrative on that particular day/week….

It really would be funny if the real world implications of what’s going on weren’t so serious.

Just sorting out ‘the study’ with my lady wife, as a feeble precusor to putting our house on the market in the spring, came across Richard Lindzen’s Wall Street Journal article in June 2006, no less, entitled: “There is no ‘consensus’ on global warming”…
Just musing on the fact that the ‘alarmists’ are still shouting at full volume seven years later…
Still a lot of work to do, folks…

Interesting. I found that comments were allowed and a diverse opinion welcomed durung the Peter Gleick affaiir. In fact, I only noticed a change in censrship policy when Dana joined the Enviroinment section.
Maybe they have special rules for their named columnists sos a their brands can deliberately deceive.

Threatening legal action against clearly fraudulent warmist claims has had results in one case I was involved in.

The case was a report to the ASA in the UK about claims made in a political document linked to a local council publication.

The ASA ruled that political documents were ultra vires for its actions, but the resultant kerfuffle at the council resulted in in all references to renewable energy and climate change vanishing from the article, and never reappearing in subsequent ones.

I think the skeptic cause is well served by some legal action being prosecuted, and this may well be the place to start.

The last quote about smoking is a bit outspoken, but the other quotes are not in my view bad enough to justify the word “libel”. I had expected something far worse. And who cares about Nucci anyway? The worse the ranting, the better for all who oppose the climate hysteria.
Nuccitelli and his friends can quietly start backpaddling, or go down screaming. The latter is far more satisfying, so I hope he will stick to his “libel” policy.

” Actually, Galileo was wrong. The Church, as well as informed scientific opinion, had long agreed that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about. ”
—-l
After looking at the 1633 Galileo trial papers and the 1616 Vatican decree, as well as Pope John Paul II’s apology to Galileo, I cannot come to the conclusion that the Church had long agreed before Galileo’s trial that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about.

There may have been other scientists who supported Galileo in this theory, but the spokesmen and authorities of the church at that time seemed quite definite that the earth did not orbit the sun. Maybe I am missing something?

If anybody else is interested, I will cite what I consider relevant passages. In all other respects I consider the post an excellent thorn in the warmists side.

Typical warmist desperation propaganda. Most sensible people, when in a deep hole, quit digging and ask for a ladder or at least a hand up. The Nuttijobbies of this world ask for a bigger spade. They wibble and rant hysterically when people start to realise the pit of invalidated, post normal science that is warmist alarmism into which vast amounts of money is poured at their considerable expense and disadvantage, is nothing more than a parasite corporate enrichment scheme. In short, people are cottoning on to the scam and are growing angry.

How typical that a libelous warmist is behaving like petulant a toddler and sharing his faith based poison with the world via the odious leftist media. Kind of sad, really. Then you look at the damage people like him have done and wonder how it was allowed to happen, how it is still happening. It’s only when you watch the BBC having conniptions about the latest go-ahead for fracking that ordinary people understand how the misinformation was spread far and wide. Fortunately the shrill protestations and smears of the Beeboids are finally being recognised for what they are; weapons grade greenie panic. I hope these panic merchants get what they deserve for creating widespread misery, baseless alarmism and the energy poverty that is costing lives. Let me be frank, I’m not talking Nobel prizes or perpetual funding from the public purse.

Viscount Monckton says “Britain, still to some extent a free country, is one up on the U.S. in allowing anyone – even a public figure – to sue for libel.”

Well that’s a new take on the UK’s defamation laws, generally considered to be the most restrictive (of free speech) of any country in the world. This is to such an extent that we have now needed to enact the Defamation Act 2013 to stop “libel tourism”, where non-residents sue each other for alleged defamatory statements having little or no relevance to the UK. And the 2013 Act also further restricts the right to jury trial of what are actually civil suits – defamation trials are heard by judge alone without a jury, unless the Court orders otherwise in individual cases.

The only persons guaranteed to benefit from libel litigation are (as always) the lawyers – Prof Lindzen (as a US citizen) should be warned firstly that the Grauniad’s “night editors” (the lawyers – and quite possibly their actual libel insurers) will have approved the Nuccitelli article for publication, and that if he comes to the UK to litigate the costs generally become more important than the actual issues: the loser almost invariably pays the costs of both parties if the case gets to trial, and liability for the opponent’s costs must be always agreed as part of any settlement.

I suggest that Prof Lindzen would be better taking the moral high ground, as a US Citizen, having the benefit (not the disadvantage) of the First Amendment, and simply publishes a forensic rebuttal of Nuccitelli’s assertions – which I am sure will make very enjoyable reading.

As a US citizen I have only rudimentary knowledge of UK libel laws, but frankly I don’t see libel here. I see a news organization affording space to one individual who used it to make refutable claims about another individual. Rather than going to court I think the better course would be for Professor Lindzen to demand equal space from the Guardian for a rebuttal.

@Alan Watt – good luck with the request. Like you, I am US, not UK. But somehow I do not see the Guardian granting the request. Would the Times?

And even under US law I see support for libel, since Nuccy clearly lied about what Lindzen both has published and stated. While more difficult to prove in the US, libel is still a crime if it can be proven that malice was involved. And there is a lot of malice in that article.

“There is a 1:10 million risk that a non-smoker will contract lung cancer, and a 1:8 million risk that a passive smoker will contract lung cancer. The difference between the two risk rates is statistically insignificant.”

On top of that …. there is statistically significant evidence from one of the largest 2nd hand smoke studies of its kind that 2nd hand smoke provides a protective effect against people getting lung cancer if they were raised as children in a house with one or both parents smoking in the house.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9776409?dopt=Abstract

The heliocentric model was not new to Copernicus or anyone else. Copernicus and Galileo resurrected another more ancient Greek idea that the solar system was heliocentric (Aristarchus of Samos c.310-230BC)… partly due to the sack of Constantinople by the ‘followers of the prophet’ which sent scholars fleeing to the West with hitherto unknown (in the West) Greek material.

First; Nuccitelli is a cretin thug. At least in the intellectual world anyway.

He gets published in the media (not peer reviewed, obviously) and uses his words in the same way an enforcer uses a hockey stick; to batter opponents. (If that is a pun, its accidental)

Don’t think for a moment he doesn’t understand the difference between what Lindzen has said and what his refutation addresses. He does. He may not consider it to be significant to the argument, but he does know the difference. That is why he is a cretin.

As for suing him; something about blood out of a turnip. Sue the publisher (if that’s possible in the UK). Otherwise you are wasting your money, or worse yet, using the courts as a weapon to silence someone you disagree with.

Even in his stupidity, Nuccitelli brings value to the debate. Intelligent people can see the error of his arguments. Its not hard to understand.

Foolish people will always be easily swayed. But they usually recognize when another fool is talking. Nuccitelli is about as obvious as an opera singer at a rodeo.

We don’t need rewrites of history regarding Galileo to see Dana is an enforcer of orthodoxy on behalf of hte pseudo-religion, AGW. Dana has it all: ignorance, blind faith, financial interest, an echo-chamber’s vapdity. The Church at the time of Galileo was wrong, and they were doing as Dana does with Lindzen: slandering him and calling him wrong based on a defense of of the orthodoxy, not on a discussion of the issue.
Mr. Moncton’s rewrite of history serves the purposes of the AGW orthodoxy: a new diversion has been introduced. Climate skeptics do best when focused on climate. Detours from climate should be done carefully if at all.

Before passive smoking is dismissed as being of no significance, consider this. Were the stats Monckton quotes based on a house with one tow or three or more smokers? Did they smoke 20 a day or a hundred`? was there ventilation? Were there children being exposed with longer term risks? Hopefully you get the point. It is difficult to quantify such a risk due to variables, but as a nurse of many years experience I can say that children from homes where they were exposed to second hand smoke appeared to be more likely to suffer chest infections and other respiratory complaints. Also have a look at this entry, or what the balance of opinion is before taking Moncktons advice and feeling safe to chain smoke in the same room as children and others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking
And remember, if he is as inaccurate on this as he appears to be, what does that say about his comments on climate science?

If Lindzen does deny a link between smoking and lung cancer, then he has published in a very strange place. See Lindzen “….Global Climate Alarmism and Historical Precedents” in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Vol18(2013).

Mike M says:
On top of that …. there is statistically significant evidence from one of the largest 2nd hand smoke studies of its kind that 2nd hand smoke provides a protective effect against people getting lung cancer if they were raised as children in a house with one or both parents smoking in the house.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9776409?dopt=Abstract

Mike, the study conclusions state that :
‘Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk. We did find weak evidence of a dose-response relationship between risk of lung cancer and exposure to spousal and workplace ETS. There was no detectable risk after cessation of exposure.’

Thanks Christopher, Lord Monckton.
Yes, I think Nuttycelli libeled Professor Lindzen in his profession. Shame and consequences are due.
The Guardian? That rag survives by doing this kind of things.
The people who read it and believe what hey read? Well, they deserve it.

That “approximately 3% of climate scientists who believe the human influence on climate is relatively small” I don’t think has much to do about the debate on CO2, and whether its effect on global mean temperatures about +1 C (not reinforced by positive feedbacks) or at least +2 C.

The source for 3% (and “97% consensus”) is probably Doran & Zimmerman (2009), which says about 97 percent has two specific opinions about “human activity” (not explicitly CO2) which I guess that most skeptics has:

“1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global tem do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?”

“… difference between Lindzen and Galileo was that Galileo was right.”

Actually Galileo’s heliocentric system was wrong, and resulted in no improvement in predictions of planetary prediction compared to the Ptolemaic geocentric scheme. Mathematically the two were identical.

It was Kepler’s revolutionary heliofocal system, abandoning circles and epicycles, that provided planetary predictions more accurate than the margins of error of the observations of the time.

Your conclusion is correct. The official position of the Roman Catholic Church was that geocentrism was the correct cosmology. There were those within the RC Church who disagreed with the official line, most notably Marin Mersenne, who was an ardent critic of Galileo until he actually read what Galileo wrote and came over to Galileo’s view. Rene Descartes also agreed with Galileo, but after the 1632 trial, Descartes decided not to publish his work Le Monde for fear of getting the same treatment. The best (i.e., relevant to this discussion) work on Galileo is probably Richard Blackwell’s Behind the Scenes at Galileo’s Trial.

Reply @ Mr Monckton (January 14, 2014 at 2:23 am),

Please bear in mind that I am almost wholly appreciative of your remonstrance to Nuccitelli; I offer my critiques only in the interest of strengthening your point. Having said that, and again apologizing for being somewhat off-topic, I feel compelled to reply to this: One commenter asserts that the doctrine of transubstantiation had only recently been declared in Galileo’s time. On the contrary, it had been declared by Christ Himself, Who said, “This is my body”, without ifs or buts. You are confusing ‘Real Presence’ with ‘transubstantiation.’ ‘Real Presence’ is a doctrine agreed to by Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran and (most) Anglican churches. ‘Transubstantiation,’ on the other hand, is a term coined by Thomas Aquinas (therefor your putting it on Pliny and other’s lips is anachronistic), as a way of explaining how -specifically in the language of Aristotelian matter theory- the bread and wine turned into the body and blood of Christ. So, ‘transubstantiation’ is a 13th-century term, which was mere speculation until, in direct response to the Protestant Reformation, the RC Church launched the Council of Trent and elevated Thomas’s theory to actual Doctrine. This is the important part: Aristotelian physics became inextricably wed to Roman Catholic doctrine at the close of the Council of Trent in 1563. Thirty-two years later, an Italian mathematician named Galileo rolled a few balls off a table and discovered that Aristotelian matter-theory was bunk. Fully twenty-one years before the first trial, Galileo knew that the church had pitched its tent on the wrong field.

Bringing all this home, the better analogy is that modern academia represents the ‘Church,’ Dr Mann, Dr Jones, et alia represent the obstinate Jesuits who doubled down on bad theory, Nuccitelli is the court fool, and the part of the cranky mathematician (Galileo) is played by Mr McIntyre.

The accusation that Professor Lindzen denies the link between smoking and lung cancer – inevitably trotted out by Nuccitelli in his unspeakable article in the Guardian – is a deliberate smear. Gareth Phillips ought not to have confused the issue by arguing the toss on whether passive smoking is dangerous, and he should certainly have been grown-up enough not to say that I had given “advice” to the effect that anyone should chain-smoke anywhere, let alone “in the same room as children and others”: for the head posting had neither said nor implied anything of the kind.

I have not studied the question whether passive smoking is as dangerous as some maintain. My comments were cautiously expressed. I said that if Professor Lindzen had questioned the link between passive smoking and lung cancer, then he might have a case and would be in good company. And I cited, in some detail, the judgment of a Federal District Court in North Carolina to the effect that the EPA had not established a statistically significant link between passive smoking and lung cancer.

It is not clear that Professor Lindzen had said anything more than that the scientific case for a link between passive smoking and lung cancer had not been soundly made. In 1991, an article in Consumer Research entitled “Passive Smoking: How Great a Hazard?”, says:

“Richard Lindzen … has emphasized that problems will arise where we will need to depend on scientific judgement, and by ruining our credibility now we leave society with a resource of some importance diminished. The implementation of public policies must be based on good science, to the degree that it is available, and not on emotion or on political needs. Those who develop such policies must not stray from sound scientific investigations, based only on accepted scientific methodologies.”

The article concludes: “Such has not always been the case with environmental tobacco smoke.” But that remark may or not have been made by Professor Lindzen.

In future, perhaps Mr. Phillips would do better to adhere to the Eschenbach Rule: if he wants to attribute statements to me, let him at least make some effort to quote the head posting accurately, rather than simply making stuff up.

If he makes stuff up about what I said in the head posting, how much reliance can be placed about his comments on climate science? More intellectual honesty, personal integrity, and scientific competence, please.

Monckton suggests that Lindzen test “the strength of the potential libel case by approaching a canny firm of lawyers . . . and asking them to decide whether they’d be willing to take the case on a contingency basis – no foal, no fee”.

I think, even if such lawyers agree on the merits for going forward legally on that basis, a circumspect view should be considered first. I think an open attempt at scientific community self-correction first would be better strategy; that is having a full public dialog with scientists exposing the Guardian (Nuccitelli). Will organizations like the GWPF assist?

Another different thought => I think Lindzen’s intellectual independence of Moncton should be kept publicly clear.

“In future, perhaps Mr. Phillips would do better to adhere to the Eschenbach Rule: if he wants to attribute statements to me, let him at least make some effort to quote the head posting accurately, rather than simply making stuff up.”
~ Monckton of Brenchley ~

“Dr. C” quibbles about the meaning of transubstantiation and appears to make the same species of mistake as Galileo in drawing an inappropriate theological conclusion from Galileo’s refutation of Aristotle’s matter theory. Transubstantiation is merely a method of describing the transformation of the substance of bread and wine into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. The accidental appearance of the bread and wine conceals the substantial reality of the Body of Christ. It was Aristotle’s doctrine of substance and accidence, not of matter, that the Church adopted in seeking to explain the miracle of the Last Supper.

Transubstantiation is not, therefore, a new doctrine: it is merely a way of borrowing from Aristotle to illuminate the original doctrine, widely repudiated by the Protestant churches (see, for instance, the 39 Articles, Luther’s theses, or Calvin’s institutes), that “this is My Body” and “this is My Blood”. That is why, contrary to “Dr. C’s” assertion, my citation of Pliny’s letter to Trajan is relevant. The Church’s teaching was, and is, plain.

In any event, the theological conclusions tendentiously drawn by Galileo from heliocentricity were concerned not with transubstantiation but with the centrality of the Incarnation. In all of this, we wander somewhat from climate science: but that is where the ridiculous Nuccitelli led us.

@negrum
Thanks for clearing that up.
I thought you were having a poke at me, and could not understand why.
It seems we were singing from the same songsheet, but in different keys and tempos!
Is that a Rap?

As is usual with your posts, at January 14, 2014 at 9:35 am you completely misunderstand the issue

I think, even if such lawyers agree on the merits for going forward legally on that basis, a circumspect view should be considered first. I think an open attempt at scientific community self-correction first would be better strategy; that is having a full public dialog with scientists exposing the Guardian (Nuccitelli).

Nuccitelli has libeled Lindzen. That is a matter of law not science.

So, there is no scientific issue so there is no possible “scientific community self-correction”.

And I resist the severe temptation to comment on your claim that you “think”.

Wandering into theology unfortunately smokescreens the case. The untruths are clear, and should be kept that way. Sadly, however, is the fact that the Guardian’s case is so blatantly incorrect, that even the dimmer bulbs shed enough light to enable them to see through to the truth, or at least realize that Lindzen is a most worthy climatologist!

Our other interlocutors have probably had enough theology for one thread. But there’s no need to put my moniker in scare quotes. I hold the Ph.D. in History of Science from an R1 university and my family name begins with the letter ‘C.’

From what I know about Professor Lindzen, I’m guessing he’s not the litigious type. Let Nutter say what he wants. It’s a free country. I imagine that would be LIndzen’s response. Anyone taken in by this Nutter is not amenable to reason in any case.

Mr. Monckton is a smart and entertaining fellow, but a tad off the beam at times, imvho.

If you really do hold a PhD in the history of science, then no doubt you have knowledge of many similar scares that have been perpetrated in order to support an agenda. In the instant example, the agenda is the unscientific claim that human CO2 emissions will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. That scare is responsible for wasting many $billions, because there is exactly zero testable scientific evidence to support it. Educated folks should be up in arms over that Chicken Little anti-science.

Finally, if you don’t want “Dr C” to be in quotes, there is a simple remedy: use your real name.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

pokerguy:

I’ve found Prof Lindzen to be very well grounded. So I would like any examples of being ‘off the beam at times’, if you have them.

What is your verdict?
That when all you can make is BS, then all you have to sell is BS.
The real shame , as many times before , is the scientific establishment failure to call out the fact its BS. And for that we may all end up paying the price,

I thank Monckton for his extensive and persistent running commentary on the Roman Catholic Church versus Galileo.

Further to my above quoted comment, Galileo should finally have a trial and not the mockery of a church proceeding. The inheritors of modern Western Civilization owe Galileo justice.

As justification for a trial for Galileo I offer this passage from the book ‘A History of Christianity’ by Paul Johnson.

“””The harsh treatment of Galileo by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 was determined, at least in part, by Pope Urban VIII’s belief that Galileo was somehow linked to Bruno’s heresies, and that his ‘Dialogue of the Two Great World Systems’, setting out Copernican theory, was full of hidden Hermetic symbolism. Less foolhardy than Bruno, Galileo made a full submission: “. . . With sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies”; nor is it true that he then added “Eppur si muove”, which might have led to his death. What he did do was to note in the margin of his own copy of the ‘Dialogue’: “In the matter of introducing novelties. And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealth and the subversion of the state.” See G. de Santillana, ‘The Crime of Galileo’ (Chicago, 1955); and C. A. Ronan, ‘Galileo’ (London, 1974).”””

Passage above in triple quotation marks (“””) was taken from “A History of Christianity” by Paul Johnson (Simon & Schuster 1976/1995)

John@EF says:
January 14, 2014 at 9:48 am
“In future, perhaps Mr. Phillips would do better to adhere to the Eschenbach Rule: if he wants to attribute statements to me, let him at least make some effort to quote the head posting accurately, rather than simply making stuff up.”
~ Monckton of Brenchley ~

Regarding Dr Lindzens iris hypothesis – please correct me if I am wrong here, but I thought he said himself that this was a theory that had now been disproved and he wished people would stop referring to it as this is how science is done. I read this in an interview on the net a couple of years ago and cannot find it now.

I also believe his links to smoking was that he did some work for the tobbacco industry and what he basically said was “The medical evidence has to be of the highest quality” – I don’t believe he ever said that smoking does not cause cancer.

Monckton states that “There is a 1:10 million risk that a non-smoker will contract lung cancer, and a 1:8 million risk that a passive smoker will contract lung cancer. The difference between the two risk rates is statistically insignificant”

Many people will take that as an indication he believes that the health risk from second hand smoke is negligible. What other interpretation can be derived? Or does he mean you may get Chronic bronchitis, Emphysema, Heart disease, Raynauds or whatever, but not lung cancer? Another poster has taken this even further by reporting that second hand smoking has a certain protective effect on children.
I have deep concerns about such statements. People who see Monckton as an expert resource and are convinced by Monckton’s asserting that there is a negligible risk to others from second hand smoke because they are unlikely to get lung cancer are likely to view smoking in company as less of a risk to others. Children rarely object if they are part of that company. I have no fundamental objection to tobacco, but to suggest second hand smoke does not cause lung cancer without pointing out it is still a habit which will kill you is indeed worrying, It would have been useful if when highlighting research which showed a poor correlation between second hand smoke and lung cancer, such statements were tempered with the added information that smoking remains a lethal habit for you and those around you. Apologies to Monckton for suggesting he did not have any issue with smoking in the company of children, I acknowledge my error due to confusing the contents of separate posts..

ps ‘It is estimated that exposure to ETS in the home causes around 11,000 deaths in the UK each year from lung cancer, stroke and ischaemic heart disease’ Jamrozik K. Estimate of deaths attributable to passive smoking among UK adults: database analysis. BMJ 2005; 330(7495):812

These people have no shame whatsoever. When I got into this subject I didn’t believe that these global warming people would make the kind of statements sceptics were telling us, I didn’t expect them to offer arguments that belong in the kindergarten. They are emotional, paranoid, blinkered and utterly not interested in the facts. they make me F*&ing sick.

We don’t need rewrites of history regarding Galileo to see Dana is an enforcer of orthodoxy on behalf of hte pseudo-religion, AGW. Dana has it all: ignorance, blind faith, financial interest, an echo-chamber’s vapdity. The Church at the time of Galileo was wrong, and they were doing as Dana does with Lindzen: slandering him and calling him wrong based on a defense of of the orthodoxy, not on a discussion of the issue.

Mr. Moncton’s rewrite of history serves the purposes of the AGW orthodoxy: a new diversion has been introduced. Climate skeptics do best when focused on climate. Detours from climate should be done carefully if at all.

– – – – – – – –

lurker [passing through laughing on],

I would tend to agree about the lead post’s treatment of the Roman Catholic Church versus Galileo.

Only one repartee is needed in order to fully address Nuccitelli’s puerile quip “The major difference between Lindzen and Galileo was that Galileo was right.” Just need to point out that both Lindzen and Galileo honor the independent freedom needed in the scientific process toward increasingly objective knowledge of reality.

I see Nuccitelli dishonoring it by myopically parroting the alarm biased findings yielded by the explicitly subjective new concept of science pioneered in the last 2+ decades by the IPCC Bureau.

One does not need to agree with him in order to thank Monckton for indeed serving up so well this intellectually tasty dish of great dialog on CAGW fallacies.

Please pass my message on to Scott Mandia, who has been known to be involved in managing a legal fund for climate scientists falsely wronged.

My message to Scott Mandia => Will you intervene in providing legal support of Lindzen, a prominent senior climate scientist, who has been so grievously and falsely accused by Nuccitelli who is a known junior grade activist from Cook’s activist pro-IPCC site?

Frankly I think there we be no chance in hell of getting any sort of libel proved on the scientific points, given most of the climate science community would agree with what is written by the author.

After all, whether you like it or not, Lindzen’s views are not mainstream when it comes to climate science. He has some respect in the community, but more for his cleverness and doggedness, not so much for his views.

The smoking one may have an outside chance, but given there is an acknowledged link between passive smoking and cancer, I still think it would be a waste of time and money. But hey it would be fun to watch if it did go to court.

Scenario B can reasonably be defended as most of the differences in this old Hansen model between A and B relate to the composition of “other” greenhouse gases besides CO2, such as methane levels. So although CO2 has matched or exceeded scenario A, it’s defensible to argue that scenario B is the better match. (But there is not a great deal of difference between A and B anyway.)

I cannot make much sense of the claim, however, that Galileo was wrong because his arguments were primarily (?) theological rather than scientific. That’s news to me and I’ve studied this historical episode carefully in academia. I will observe that Galileo did publish a pamphlet in vernacular Italian, rather than the more learned Latin of philosophy, where he setup a debate between, essentially, the Church and himself. The character defending the official Church position was named the equivalent of simpleton or idiot. (The traditional narrative that an evil Church set out to crush science and Galileo in particular is not quite as black and white as some defenders try to make out.)

Well, Galileo was making very precise scientific arguments, but the theologians (esp. the Jesuits and the theological faculty at the University of Paris) felt like he had stepped too far into their domain, claiming that empirical science can and should be a factor in Biblical interpretation. He was on their playground and they didn’t like it.

And yes, in the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo put the RC Church’s position into the mouth of the character named ‘SImplicius.’ More specifically, this character represented Maffeo Barberini, who by this point was better known as Pope Urban VIII.

Will Nitschke: good paragraph two. My extensive reading on this indicates that Galileo claimed *theological* implications of his astronomical ideas, going beyond the boundaries of science, and that the gentler of the ecclesiastical authorities said, “look, you can put the Sun and the Earth anywhere you want but you have to get out of the theology business”. My understanding is that Galileo refused any sort of accommodation, whatsoever, partly as a proud, furious response to some high-handed rhetoric from a Church hard-liner. (Of course some of the Church officials were similarly motivated by wounds to their pride.)
I believe Lord Monckton may have a point about the Church’s heliocentrism, although it was more “openness” than an embrace as the Galileo situation was unfolding. This was an age where Aristotle had already been proven wrong on several fronts, and various parts of the Church hierarchy were starting to realize that the scientific method was going to leave much of the old knowledge of nature behind. They also showed signs of the modern idea of trying to harmonize faith and reason in a way that gave much more respect to evidence-based reasoning.

It’s not terribly inaccurate to call the whole affair a tragic misunderstanding.

If the case is solid, then libel action MUST be taken, as it will send shivers up their spines.If they have to pay up a large sum of money in compensation, they could be forced to close, or at least go begging to George Soros or Greenpeace for money. A mere retraction in the web site will not be adequate as this sort of thing is rarely read. Retraction would have to be widespread -perhaps emails sent to all subscribers, who cannot be allowed back to the site unless they have read the retraction statement and answered a couple of questions to ensure it has been read.The same would have to apply to FaceBook and Twitter shares-banned from their accounts until they can answer the questions.Facebook would have a record of every person who has received and clicked on to the links.

It would only be fair if it became compulsory to inform all readers of the mis-information or cough up enough money for Professor Lindzen to get the message out himself(100s of millions here-TV, radio, newspaper full page ads.)Love to see them trying to create BS excuses to avoid admitting their deception.

David Irving (Holocaust denier- a real “denier”)was comprehensively debunked in a legal battle, which basically destroyed him financially, which is why we have not heard from him for a number of years.The Holocaust was real. My father recounted to me his experiences from the war many years before Holocaust denial even started! You would have to ask yourself why anyone would make up accounts over a decade before denial of corroborating accounts was even mooted.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/refute
prove (a statement or theory) to be wrong or false; disprove:these claims have not been convincingly refuted
prove that (someone) is wrong:his voice challenging his audience to rise and refute him
deny or contradict (a statement or accusation):a spokesman totally refuted the allegation of bias

Everybody will agree that the Iris Effect has been refuted in the third sense (deny or contradict). Lindzen appears to believe that the Iris Effect has not been refuted in the first sense (proven false).

See his presentation for Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, @ 44.00 minutes.

Question. Is it possible for a PhD candidate or someone seeking tenure at one of these institutions to be critical of the global warming alarmism?

Lindzen: Not openly … I don’t think a young person today could make a career if they were openly critical of global warming – instead there are secret sceptics … papers written – I could cite a few …
A paper by Horwath and Soden where they confirmed the Iris Effect I worked on 12 years ago …. but they have to add a paragraph, and I’m sure the reviewers insisted on it, that said although this would appear to confirm it, we wish to refer the reader to the articles that criticise it and point out that it’s wrong.

It’s not terribly inaccurate to call the whole affair a tragic misunderstanding.”

– – – – – – –

wrecktafire,

Galileo was subjected to Inquisition. Wouldn’t you say the many centuries of the Inquisition’s widespread activities were known to be tragic only to its many victims? The Inquisition was the church authority forcefully correcting its victim’s understanding. The correction of their victim’s understanding often involved a final fatal step for the victims.

Figure 2, Manley’s Central England Temperature instrumental record between 1694 and 1723 is rather a weak link, as some of it is not instrumental, some is not in England, and some is not outdoors, but rather in unheated rooms.

“Manley1953) published a time series of monthly mean temperatures representative of central England for 1698-1952, followed (Manley 1974) by an extended and revised series for 1659-1973. Up to 1814 his data are based mainly on overlapping sequences of observations from a variety of carefully chosen and documented locations. Up to 1722, available instrumental records fail to overlap and Manley needs to use non-instrumental series for Utrecht compiled by Labrijn (1945), in order to mate the monthly central England temperature (CET) series complete. Between 1723 and the 1760s there are no gaps in the composite instrumental record, but the observations generally were taken in unheated rooms rather than with a truly outdoor exposure….”

Now Eli could be snarky about this, but it is a fine point upon which many have foundered until it was pointed out to them.

@John Whitman: Yes, the Inquisitions were bad, but I think your concerns are off-topic in this thread. Lord Monckton was discussing what was believed by whom re: the Sun and the Earth.

– – – – – – – – –

wrecktafire,

Thank you for replying.

A topic on this thread introduced by Monckton is about Galileo’s situation And the church’s situation. Monckton said,

“Actually, Galileo was wrong. The Church, as well as informed scientific opinion, had long agreed that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way about. However, Galileo had drawn inappropriate theological conclusions from heliocentricity, perpetrating the notorious non sequitur that since the Earth was not the centre of the Universe the Incarnation and Crucifixion were of less importance than the Church maintained. It was Galileo’s theological conclusion the Church objected to, not the scientific conclusion that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. Galileo had persisted in a curmudgeonly refusal to recant his non sequitur. Seven of the ten cardinals who tried him offered him a compromise: if he would recant his assertion that the Earth went round the Sun his theological conclusion would fall away and there would be no need for him to recant it. He agreed to this: but three of the Cardinals, to their credit, refused to sign this nonsensical agreement, to which neither the majority of the Bench nor the accused ought ever to have assented.”

As you can see Monckton wanders voluntarily into the area of the world view of the Church versus Galileo’s independent renaissance man world view. Monckton expands on it in his subsequent comments. So further expansion on the situation by other commenters is in like kind, not off topic.

The Church was paranoid and it saw fearful conspiracies everywhere , therefore the Inquisition. One of its fears is that it was losing its total society, that total society had included up to Galileo the requirement to enforce an official church science position. Galileo was a serious threat because he opposed the church’s role as science authority. Galileo was not wrong in this regard as Monckton claims, the church was wrong to act as an authority in science over individual scientist thought.

Galileo was not wrong in his science approach and process. His research may have been corrected through the centuries but that just makes it a typical part the normal process of the evolution if society.

Eli is fully aware that you have retreated into CYA mode, but still, give a bunny a break. The bit about CET between 1690 and 1725 is so strange that even you must take pause. Parts were not insturmental, parts were not in Europe and most were indoors.

Having looked through many thousands of references at the met office archives concerning weather for cet in the period 1538 to 1750 i believe, as do many others, that Manley made a good fist of representing the climate of the period 1659 to 1730, always remembering the maxim of Hubert lambs ‘ we can can understand the tendency but not the precision.

Many reconstructions are made using weather references by adapting a score that relates to the likely temperature. Very many people have gone through the Manley data, including myself. You quote David Parker who constructed the daily series from 1772? ‘ I had the pleasure of meeting him at the met office a few weeks ago and he would not dismiss manleys work in the manner you do.

I suspect your concern is about the hockey stick apparent from around 1690 to 1740. Phil jones wrote a paper about this and his conclusion was that natural variability might be greater than hitherto suspected.

Camuffo and jones were given a large grant by the EU to look at historic weather records in Europe some of which came from unheated rooms. This was a short lived vogue instituted by jurin of the royal society, it was by no means the only means of recording temperatures.

I would sooner use the numerous weather references we have, augmented by instrumental records, plus other studies, rather than tree rings, wouldn’t you?

REPLY: Don’t apologize, his name isn’t “Eli” either. It’s Dr. Joshua Halpern of Howard University, who has some silly reason for continuing to play the part of an annoying rabbit on the Internet.
While I think Dr. Halpern is mentally aberrant in his presentation, the point about Manley’s measurements has some merit.

This CET entry in Wikipedia may or may not be accurate, it depends on how Connolleyized it is:

Before 1722, instrumental records do not overlap and Manley used a non-instrumental series from Utrecht compiled by Labrijn (1945), to make the monthly central England temperature (CET) series complete. Between 1723 and the 1760s most observations were taken not from outside measurements but from indoor readings in unheated rooms, and thus are of little or no use.

If true, what that exposure will do is limit the diurnal variation, since the mass of the home acts as a heat sink, retarding reaching what would be a normal Tmax and Tmin, much like what we’ve seen with poorly sited weather stations in the present.

So, some caution should be used with that data, just like present day data that isn’t properly corrected for siting issues. if the rooms still exist, a bias correction might be established empirically. Maybe that’s already been done, I don’t know as I haven’t time to research it all now.

Dr. Halpern has no interest in real answers however, his real interest is disruption, since he long lost his ability to be scientifically curious. Between his snark, disruption, taunting with juvenile names, and the hiding behind the rabbit mask, that’s why he doesn’t get much face-time here. If he wants to post as his own name, I’ll take him off moderation. He’s long known this but won’t do it. Because somehow his need for continuing this silly schtick is greater than his need for honesty in his presentation.

Eli Rabett seems upset at my citing the Central England Temperature Record from 1695-1735. He finds it strange that there could have been so much warming then. However, that period coincided with the end of the Maunder Minimum, when the sunspot record shows solar activity recovering very rapidly. It is not, therefore, in the least an implausible result. And it is a whole lot better than measuring tree-rings from a single tree.

The truth is that there is no sound evidence that the temperature change in the last century was “unprecedented in 11,000 years”; and there is much evidence that the 0.7 K warming over the past 100 years is well within natural variability. Mr. Nuccitelli was wrong to try to suggest otherwise on the basis of a single discredited paper whose author has himself said that the conclusion drawn by Nuccitelli from it is not justified by the paper itself.

Well I think I would give the fairly careful work and research undertaken over many years by Manley over ‘tree-mometers’ and the like preferred by others for the same period but you believe (or trust) what you believe.

Manley carried out a lot of cross referencing, I have seen the data at the met office archives. He may be a few tenths out but we should look at historic temperatures using lambs maxim quoted Above. As I say many many people have looked at the data including Phil jones and he certainly confirmed the existence of the 1690 to to 1740 hockey stick.

Here is a link to the eu funded ‘ improve’ project. It’s a massive book that reexamined historic european temperatures but yes camuffo and others made a reasonable fist on the indoor measurements, but generally there were external ones as well.

From the original post:In Central England, warming at a rate equivalent to 4.33 Cº/century (Fig. 2) was measured over the four decades 1694-1733.

Sloppy work here since Monckton’s own graph clearly states: “+1.73ºC±4.33ºC/century.

Also the reference to Hansen’s presentation repeats an old canard which has been repeatedly refuted. He clearly stated that scenario B was the most likely and that scenario A included projections that were unlikely. Particularly in view of the expected signing of the Montreal protocol which would mean the end of ‘Business as usual’.

Agnostic says:
January 13, 2014 at 11:16 pm
…
DrC, and Christopher Monckton, I am intrigued by the disagreement between you on Galileo. I am sure no one is making things up, but it would be great for you both to clarify and indicate where and why you have come to the conclusions you have.

This is an issue only to the religious or the “we discovered it here” mindset. It’s clear for instance that Omar Khayyam, the Persian astronomer and poet, entertained a heliocentric concept of existence, if only in metaphor. His magic lantern” quatrain firmly places the sun in the center of things, even when the anachronistic term “magic lantern” is swapped out for a less misleading phrase, and old Omar died long before Gallileo was born. Besides which, the fact that the earth goes around the sun is self-evident to anyone spending time looking at the night sky over the course of several years. That is the simplest way to mutually understand both the diurnal apparent motion of the sun AND the annually-cyclical change in the visible stars of the night sky (thus Omar’s reference to the sun in the center of the “lantern” or diorama with the rest of “us” circling it). Old Khayyam was an astronomer and put together the best calendar available until the modern one was introduced several centuries later.

The “science” addressed by Gallileo was heavily influenced by “idealist” philosophies that assumed a perfection in the universe that would match human concepts of perfection that were current at the time and had been entrenched in European science since the time of the classical Greek philosophers like Aristotle. According to that view cyclical motions HAD to be circular (because circles are a perfect form of infinite symmetry). To account for the annual changes in the night sky required complications to the motion – epicycles – to reconcile that with diurnal patterns, but it still had to ignore the effect of distance on the apparent brightness of a light source. In short, most of the debates were between observationists like Khayyam and theorists who placed their theory above observation. Hark back to Trenberth’s pathos in the CG1 email, “… the data must be wrong.” or words to very similar effect, and we see that the pattern continues today.

As I’ve already pointed out upthread, the changes in the CET methodology between the 40 year period used to illustrate rapid warming, which starts in the LIA, mean that it is not safe to infer that because it correlates with global temps now, it did then.

Utrecht is a charming city, but it is not in Central England, last time I checked.

This from an ABC (Australia) program with Richard Lindzen. It goes on to discuss Lindzen’s views on smoking and cancer and it is clear that he does not believe that, in Nuccatelli’s words, ” a drag from a cigarette – which Lindzen also denies cause cancer.” That the Gruaniad would tolerate libel such as that is staggering.

Anna: One of the things that I think Nick and I have to look at when we’re weighing
up who to trust on this debate is people’s past positions and I know you were
someone who was giving testimony for the tobacco industry.

“…changes in the CET methodology between the 40 year period used to illustrate rapid warming, which starts in the LIA, mean that it is not safe to infer that because it correlates with global temps now, it did then.”

So then, selecting one tree “correlates with global temps now, [as] it did then”? One tree? In Siberia? From that one tree, you “infer” the so-called “human fingerprint of global warming”?? As if.

Really, the CET is one of very few temperature records extant from the 1600’s. Even if the record was started in the 1700’s, it would tell the same story: global warming since the LIA has been natural. There is no ‘accelerated warming’ that looks any different from past global warming episodes. <–[How many 'hockey sticks' can you count in that chart? A dozen? Two dozen? More? I can count at least twenty, from before CO2 began to rise.]

Every time one mentions Hansen’s ridiculously overblown global-warming predictions put in front of the U.S. Senate in 1988, the trolls come out and say he got it right, really. And here they are again, saying that scenario B was his preferred scenario, not scenario A.

In 1987 he had said he preferred scenario B, but on 23 June 1988, in his oral testimony before the U.S. Senate, he had changed his mind. This is what he actually said:

“We have considered cases ranging from business as usual, which is scenario A, to draconian emissions cuts, scenario C, which would totally eliminate net trace gas growth by year 2000.”

So, exactly as I stated in the head posting, Hansen told the Senate that Scenario A was his “business-as-usual” scenario.

The only reference he made to Scenario B, later in his oral testimony, was to say that it was “the intermediate trace gas scenario.” Intermediate, that is, between business as usual and scenario C, his drastic-emissions-cuts scenario, in which no increase in CO2 concentration would occur after the year 2000.

So that settles the question. The wildly-exaggerated Scenario A was Hansen’s “business-as-usual” scenario, and that’s that.

Granted, he was almost certainly not telling the truth when he denied holding Copernican opinions after 1616. The universe as then conceived by both geocentrists & heliocentrists was “wrong”, in that neither the earth nor the sun lies at the center of the universe, since under modern cosmology, the expanding universe has no center.

However Galileo was not wrong that the earth moves, rotating on its axis daily & going around the sun annually, contrary to 17th century Church doctrine (not officially changed until 1835). In 1633 the Roman Inquisition found him “vehemently suspect of heresy” for believing that the Sun lies motionless at the center of the universe & that the Earth is not at its center & moves. Further, he was found guilty (or vehemently suspect) of thinking it acceptable to hold & defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture.

Much as I admire Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s advocacy of climate reality, his history of science is in this case regrettably flawed, which in no way detracts from his argument for libel

And suddenly the Guardian, where climate scientists are oh so well viewed, decides to publish such a controversial article by what in their own terminology is “a fossil-fuel shill”, who attempts to shreds to pieces the reputation of the professor.